UPMC to ban smoking, tobacco use during work day

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is banning smoking and smokeless-tobacco use by its employees, students, doctors and volunteers during the work day, starting next July.

UPMC is one of the Pittsburgh area's biggest employers. When it does something like this, it gets a lot of attention. It also raises questions in the public's mind -- what exactly can employers do about employees smoking when they're not actually at work?

UPMC facilities have been smoke-free for years. It considers this the next logical step: no smoking for staff during their work day, even if they're on breaks or at lunch off their employer's property. Senior Vice President of Human Resources Greg Peaslee says the health system will still hire smokers, and it doesn't fire people for smoking. He says this planned new policy isn't anti-smoker, but pro-health.

"They are bringing that smoke into the facilities. It's coming in on their clothes, it's coming in on their hair, it's coming in on their breath. And we want to provide an environment that is the safest and best possible for our patients," said Peaslee. He says smoke "resonates medically for 30 minutes after you smoke," literally following smoker employees back into the workplace. Peaslee says the health system is not trying make employees stop smoking, that it's trying to limit smoke coming into its facilities.

Some smokers who spoke with Channel 4 Action News -- smokers who don't work for UPMC -- expressed shocked that an employer can lay down such rules.

After lighting a cigarette just off UPMC property, Beth Hancock of Carrick said," I think it's pretty dumb. If they want to smoke, they should be allowed to smoke. I mean, it's their lungs, it's their health." Leea Stevens agreed with her friend, saying, "Like she said, freedom of speech, freedom to smoke."

"I think that's crazy," said Richard Zeek, a smoker whose wife is about to give birth to the couple's second child at Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC. "I would never, never take a job where they try to control me outside of work. I mean, you're your own person. If you want to smoke, you have the right to smoke."

However, employment law attorney Colleen Ramage Johnston says you don't have that right in Pennsylvania.

"There's no federal law that would prohibit that. Some states -- there are almost 30 of them now -- have specific statutes that say you can't discriminate against a smoker. Pennsylvania's not one of them", said Johnston, a shareholder in the law firm of Rothman Gordon.

"The county, for example, could pass an ordinance, the city could pass an ordinance, to specifically prohibit that kind of discrimination," Johnston added. "But right now, the employees are out of luck."

"They don't have rights as a smoker as a class," Johnston said, though employers cannot discriminate on the basis of race, sex or disability.

Peaslee says UPMC provides free assistance for employees and their families if they want to stop smoking -- for example, "no co-pays, no cost to the employees, pharmaceuticals, like the patch, lozenges, free counseling."

Employee Melissa Ford said, "I'm thinking about quitting because I don't want to wind up getting fired and stuff like that. when I heard about this I was like, 'Are you serious?' My jaw just dropped."